Making Fat Balls

[Feral007]

I'm sorry but there's no other way to say it, and you're the people who refer to them as fat balls. So I'm pleading not guilty.

Coming into Autumn here, thank goodness. With so little rain, and therefore little food.

Was thinking about getting an automatic feeder - cost a mint, but the chooks should be able to learn to stand on the plate and open it? You'd think so. And apparently other birds don't weigh enough to do that. Except perhaps the crows, the really big magpie's, maybe the kookaburra's as well if they get too hungry. So I may not actually save money on chook food when you think about it. But I'm willing to try.

However, I plan to put out some food for the birds as I feel terrible when they are all sitting around the chook house waiting for me in the mornings. About a hundred or so.
And I thought about the Fat Balls I hear you talk about for birds.

So how do you make Fat Balls? And keep the smutty remarks to yerselfs!

And how do you hang them up? I'm thinking I usually hang things by string or wire but that could be nasty for the birds if they swallowed it.
So technical all this stuff

[Linzy]

mum made sum with lard from chip pan then she just brought a seed mix. Melt lard mix through the seed then pour into old yoghurt pots push two ends of a piece of string in the top and once set you have a loop to hang it from and just pull away the yoghurt pot. Im guessing you could put mealworms and other thing in them aswell.

[Nannysally99]

I make mine in those silicone egg poacher things. Seed, lard and pop in the bird feeder


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[Bren In Pots]

Feral step by step instructions here :-

How to make fat ball bird feeders

then some more bird feeding info :-

The RSPB: Advice

[ancee]

They much prefer these home made ones too. I bought some from somewhere (could have been Lidl) and left them in the shed. One had fallen apart and it honestly looked like the inside was made of sawdust and wood chippings! No wonder nobody eats them!

[Two_Sheds]

how do you make Fat Balls? ... And how do you hang them up?

I can never resist shouting to Mr TS "do you need drier balls?" in the laundry aisle of the supermarket


Anyway: this is the recipe I've perfected over the years

beef suet (not the veggie type)
bird seed
xmas pudding bowl (mini)


1. fill the pud bowl with suet & put in microwave until the suet's liquified
2. stir in bird seed
3. cool it down, then pop in the freezer. The freezer makes the ball pop out of the mould nice & clean, so you don't get slimy fat all over your hands


I put them in the feeders, but you can put string in the mixture prior to freezing, if you wanted to tie them to trees.

[Feral007]

Thanks everyone! From the birds.

Apart from about 60 wild ducks, I've got all sorts of birds already out there. I'm not planning to feed them my hen mix, but happy to make some fat balls and put them out.

Will start as soon as it cools down. Glad to hear about them popping out when they go in the freezer TS. Hope Mr TS has the driest balls in town

[RedThorn]

Either that or the coldest